


Destination Unknown

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Smart People [7]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3291488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been two and a half years and Sarah’s never really met Lorraine’s family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destination Unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luka/gifts).



> Written for Luka for Denial Secret Santa. Rather cheekily in the university AU we both dabble in and using her prompts for Lorraine/Sarah, a very little bit of angst provided there was a happy ending, and 'the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day' – except that I went a bit sideways on that one. Plus a spot of Nick/Stephen which happened along. *g* fififolle gave me special snow-driving advice, and Bella beta’d for me.

            Stephen sat down across the table from Sarah and eyed her.

 

            Sarah tapped her fingers idly on the table, kept her eyes on the cardboard cup of sludge formerly known as coffee, and completely ignored Stephen.

 

            Stephen sighed, unfolded himself from the cafeteria table and attached stool, and fetched himself a hot chocolate, with a brief pause to admire the hideous, tacky decorations either the CMU catering staff or an unusually wretched undergraduate had dragged out of storage and put up all over the place. When he came back, Sarah was still staring mordantly at her cup of coffee, which was now undoubtedly cold. Stephen sat back down again and began sipping at his hot chocolate.

 

            “Thesis going badly?” he volunteered after a moment, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Sarah had been in a funny mood for the past week and Stephen had no idea why. It was a problem, because Sarah was one of his few actual close friends, and he relied on her to make the small talk in their friendship.

 

            Sarah lifted her head with a sigh, and ran one hand through silky black hair, twisting a handful ruthlessly and propping her chin on her fist, blowing out one cheek. “No.”

 

            “Didn’t you go up to London the other week?” Stephen tried. “For research? With Lorraine?”

 

            “Nngh,” Sarah said, uncharacteristically uncommunicative, and went back to contemplating her coffee.

 

            “Did you have fun?”

 

            “Oh. Yeah.” Sarah flashed him an unconvincing smile.

 

            Stephen shifted uncomfortably and took a gulp of his tea, psyching himself up to ask personal questions. “Um... Is Caroline Steel bothering Lorraine again?”

 

            “She’s quiet at the moment.”

 

            “Helen?” Stephen tried. It was getting easier to talk about her, now that she was the External Examiner and a thorn in everyone’s side as opposed to just his and Nick’s.

 

            “Lorraine had a quiet word and now Helen makes excuses not to be in rooms alone with her.”

 

            Stephen experienced a brief moment of glee, and then came up with another reason why Sarah might be feeling less than happy, and became really quite worried. “You and Lorraine...”

 

            “Mm?”

 

            Stephen decided to blurt it out. “Are you... doing all right?”

 

            Sarah lifted her head and gave him a deeply suspicious look. “We’re not breaking up, if that’s what you mean. Please tell me that’s not what you meant.”

 

            Stephen grinned nervously. “It sounded like it for a moment.”

 

            Sarah leaned across and flicked him on the nose, making him recoil. “You idiot! No. We’re not breaking up. We’re not even going through a sticky patch, for God’s sake. I fully intend to settle down with Lorraine and do the hearts and flowers and wedding bells thing and if you tell her that so help me _God_ I will kill you –” Sarah paused to take a breath. “-but yes, we’re fine.”

 

            “Good,” Stephen said, inexpressibly relieved. He hadn’t realised he was so concerned, but now that he thought about it, it would be weird for Sarah and Lorraine to break up. Weird and disconcerting. They just seemed like a unit, a solid, unbreakable pair; he couldn’t even imagine them apart. He hoped he never had to.

 

            He also hoped Sarah wasn’t going to have a diabolical thought, brighten up and suggest that he was her bridesmaid, because that was exactly the kind of thing she would do. “So, um-” he said, in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, at the same time as  Sarah said “It’s just,” and they got tangled up in a flurry of demands that the other speak, because Sarah insisted that he had to start conversations these days.

 

            “I wanted to know what was bothering you!” Stephen said at last, much too loudly, so that a gaggle of English students at the next table fell silent and started eavesdropping. Much good would it do them: Sarah was thoroughly blasé about discussing the fact that she had a love life in front of other post-grads or undergraduates, but had a cunning way of skirting topics that Lorraine would consider sensitive while still getting her message across to the person she was talking to, which was clearly only a concession to Lorraine’s sensibilities.

 

            Sarah deflated. She had evidently been hoping for some kind of reprieve. “It’s...” She flicked a piece of sauce-covered noodle, discarded from some student’s lunch, across the table. “It’s her family, okay? It’s coming up to Christmas, and last weekend when we were in London Lorraine reminded me - we said we were going to hers this Christmas.”

 

            Stephen blinked, and wished for Dave Owen’s persistence and ability to drag a coherent story out of even the most addled fresher. “I thought you’d met Lorraine’s family?”

 

            “Not all of them, not all at once,” Sarah blurted, “and, I mean – there are a _lot_ of them, Stephen.”

 

            “I don’t know anything about them,” Stephen pointed out. He’d seen pictures – Lorraine kept one on her desk, next to and exactly in line with one of Sarah – and even knew a few names, but otherwise knew nothing except that Lorraine had riotous twin brothers and a precocious niece.

 

            “Well, there are a lot of them,” Sarah said gloomily, and dropped her head into her hands. “And, I mean – the first Christmas we were together, it was my great-aunt’s last, so of course I went to her and Lorraine came for a day or two. And the second, well, that was last Christmas, and what with all the snow, by the time we got home we had about a hundred voicemails saying Lorraine’s parents were the only members of the family who’d actually made it to Lorraine’s sister’s place, and not to worry, the family meet-up was scheduled for New Year. Except Lorraine’s brother George managed to fracture his spine, so Eric – the other brother – and Lorraine’s mother went to Liverpool to be with him. So it was off.” She sighed, and grabbed handfuls of her hair and twisted again. Personally, Stephen thought that looked painful. “Basically, every time I might have met Lorraine’s family, all of them as opposed to just one or two, it hasn’t happened. And now I’ve been with her two and a half years and I still don’t know her family and they don’t know me, and... What if they don’t like me?”

 

            “Why wouldn’t they?” Stephen said cluelessly. “Like you, I mean?”

 

            Sarah gave him a narrow look, as if she suspected him of taking the mickey.

 

            “That was a serious question!”

 

            “I don’t know! Too noisy? Too much of a klutz? Too inappropriate? Not good enough?”

 

            Stephen, temporarily rendered speechless at the sight of confident, brazen Sarah fretting about making a good impression on her girlfriend’s parents, gaped like a fish for a moment. “Lorraine loves you. That counts for something!” he exclaimed, once he’d managed to collect his temporarily scattered thoughts.

 

            “Her family are important to her. What if I get it wrong and they _hate_ me?” Sarah all but wailed.

 

            “Woman up,” Stephen said ruthlessly, deciding that it was easier to deal with Nick’s backlog of paperwork than Sarah freaking out. “You’ll be fine. It’s only a couple of days and you’ll be with Lorraine the whole time. And get yourself another cup of coffee.”

 

***

 

            As a concession to the holiday season, the alarm went off at nine o’clock on Christmas Eve, Big Ben’s chimes and the start of the BBC News waking both Lorraine and Sarah. Neither woman made any secret of liking the warmth, and they were under not just a very heavy duvet but a selection of blankets, tangled up in each other; Lorraine, more resolute than Sarah, sat up and stretched, yawning awake, then climbed out of bed.

 

            Sarah mumbled piteously and snuggled deeper into the blankets. “You’re letting the _cold_ in.”         

 

            “You have to get up at some point,” Lorraine said reasonably, pulling on her dressing-gown and padding over to the window. Even half-asleep, Sarah could hear the quiet excitement in her voice, and felt a slight sinking feeling: Lorraine was devoted to her family and didn’t see them as often as she would have liked, because of the difficulties of collecting them in one place. The idea of getting to be with all of them for even three days was making her very happy indeed.

 

            Lorraine was so happy, Sarah thought miserably, and dragged the duvet over her head, curling up in the warm spot the two of them had occupied for the past ten hours. She owed it to her to be cheerful too.

 

            Having made this resolution, Sarah prepared to poke her head out of the blankets and dress in the clothes she’d set out last night (thoroughly confusing Lorraine, who was used to seeing Sarah charge around the room trying to put her earrings and her bra on at the same time after suddenly realising that she had to be at CMU in ten minutes and wasn’t dressed, and who had no idea that Sarah had been putting actual careful thought into the clothes she was going to wear on this break). Then she heard Lorraine whisk the curtains open, and her sudden flat “Oh.”

 

            Sarah tunnelled out of the bedclothes. “What – oh.”

 

            It was snowing. Lorraine was still frozen with her hands on the heavy curtains, staring out into the sky and the world outside as the snow settled softly on the kids’ playground several floors beneath them, and, more importantly, the roads.

 

            The BBC, with exquisite tact, chose this moment to announce that the heavy snowfall being experienced by Scotland and the north of England had (against all predictions to the contrary) made it far south enough to seriously affect the south of England.

 

            Sarah watched Lorraine’s shoulders slump as her hands dropped to her sides, and felt a slight pang of sympathetic hurt. She reached out and turned off the alarm, cutting off the announcer mid-cheerful prediction about sledging over Christmas, and Lorraine turned around to face her.

 

            “I suppose we’re not going to make it this year,” Lorraine said, with brittle cheerfulness. “It’s settling, look at it. And the news just said it was going to get worse, didn’t it?” She smiled, and a knife twisted in Sarah’s heart. “Never mind.” She came back to the bed and climbed in, kissing Sarah, her hand sliding onto Sarah’s waist.

 

            Sarah kissed her back, feeling the lack of heart in her embrace and knowing this wasn’t going to work. Much as she’d enjoyed last Christmas, spent alone in the new flat, tucked up for a week against the cold and snow, living on a ridiculously good Christmas dinner and its leftovers for days and completely forgetting about real life, like jobs and half-done PhDs and other nonsense, they’d _meant_ to spend that Christmas alone. This was different. She owed it to Lorraine to try to fix it.

 

            “No, wait,” Sarah said, breaking the kiss. “We could make it.”

 

            Hope lit up in Lorraine’s eyes, but she stayed cautious. “Are you sure? It’s three hours’ drive in the normal way of things, and with the roads...”

 

            “If we get dressed and leave right now we could make it in good time,” Sarah suggested.

 

            “What if we get stuck? And I’m not used to driving in snow...”

 

            “I used to do it all the time,” Sarah assured her, ignoring the fact that that had been when she lived and worked in Edinburgh three years ago. “We can take things with us in case we do get stuck, but I think if we go quickly we’ll get onto the big roads – and those will be gritted, after last year was such a disaster. Nick and Stephen made it up to Scotland, didn’t they?”

 

            “Yes,” Lorraine said, making a poor show of being reluctant, “but Nick...”

 

            “Cutter the Nutter, I know – but Stephen’s quite smart,” Sarah said, shoving the memory of his weeks-old advice to her about her anxiety to the back of her mind. She hadn’t yet told Lorraine how she felt, and on current showing she never would. Never mind: she’d make it up as she went along.

 

            Sarah put a smile on her face, kissed the tip of Lorraine’s nose and bounced out of bed. “Come on, Lorraine, we need to get a move on!”

 

              It was cold outside the duvet’s protective warmth, and Sarah shivered convulsively as she dressed herself – smartish trousers, plain soft dark green top, tan-coloured, buttonless cardigan and the necklace made of strings of green and gold glass beads Lorraine had bought her for their first Christmas as a couple: maybe the most respectable outfit she could put together out of her wardrobe. Behind her she could hear Lorraine stripping off and dressing herself, and then suddenly she felt the warmth of Lorraine’s arms around her as Lorraine hugged her tightly from behind and whispered “I _love_ you” in Sarah’s ear, kissing behind her ear and the back of her neck, then darting away to put the kettle on.

 

            Sarah paused with one leg in her trousers and the other one out and sighed.

 

            _The things we do for love_ , she thought, but didn’t say, and consoled herself that she would now feature in Lorraine’s parents’ minds as the madwoman who persuaded Lorraine that it was possible to make it to the family Christmas meet-up when she was despairing, rather than just the madwoman.

 

            She finished dressing and ran around getting together blankets and thermoses and snacks in case of emergency, while Lorraine made coffee and reheated croissants for breakfast, not as keyed up as she had been but cautiously optimistic.

 

            “We’re out of jam,” Lorraine observed, buttering two croissants and slathering one in marmalade for herself. “Nutella?”

 

            “Um – Marmite,” Sarah decided on a whim, stuffing a picnic blanket into a bag not designed for something quite that large.

 

            “Marmite? Really?” Lorraine wrinkled her nose.

 

            “It’s the season of goodwill, I’m trying new things,” Sarah said, rationalising after the fact, and duly accepted a large mouthful of Marmite-y croissant.

 

            Lorraine raised a questioning eyebrow at her, already halfway through her own croissant, and proffered a mug of coffee.

 

            “Not bad,” Sarah conceded judiciously, then gulped down the coffee. She set down the last of the emergency things by the front door, next to Lorraine’s small case and her rather larger one containing their clothes and things for Christmas, and finished off the rest of her croissant with no regard for table manners or other such niceties.

 

            Lorraine rolled her eyes, but smiled and kissed her, and Sarah licked stray marmalade and crumbs off the edges of her lips. “Hey,” Lorraine protested, but softly, as she put the empty mugs away. “Not when I can’t take you straight back to bed.”

 

            “I’ve always wanted to investigate car sex,” Sarah said cheerfully, handing Lorraine her coat and putting her own on.

 

            “Does this fall under the heading of trying new things?” Lorraine enquired, buttoning up her coat and wrapping herself in a scarf.

 

            “You tell me,” Sarah retorted, noting for future, X-rated reference that Lorraine hadn’t simply blushed and demurred, as she would have done only six months ago. “Come on, we should get going.”

 

            Lorraine’s expression turned serious again, and she picked up some of the bags. “Of course.”

 

            “You go and hold the lift, and I’ll lock up and set the alarm,” Sarah chivvied, beginning to follow her own instructions.

 

            As she gave the flat a cursory inspection and unplugged some of the electrical appliances that might set the place on fire while they were gone, she wondered to herself how wanting Lorraine to be happy had turned her – albeit temporarily – into the organised one in their relationship. Surely there were some barriers that weren’t meant to be crossed?  
  
            Sarah shifted the remaining items of luggage out of the flat and began to program the alarm, dismissing everything else as crazy talk and trying to concentrate on everything she’d ever learnt about driving in the snow.

 

***

 

            The roads of the small town – the _very_ small town – they lived in weren’t salted yet, but even at this hour on Christmas Eve several people had clearly been up and about and driving, because the main roads weren’t as snowed up as they might have been; in addition, although the snow was still falling, it was doing so sporadically, and not as much had settled as Sarah had originally feared. Still, she navigated carefully through the increasingly slushy high street, and resigned herself to approaching the motorway at a crawl – far from her usual driving style.

 

Lorraine snuggled into the front passenger seat, thermoses and snacks at her feet, and called her older sister and the woman hosting the entire extended family, Jacinth, to let her know they were in fact coming to Christmas dinner. Sarah braked for a harried middle-aged man headed directly for Sainsbury’s with two kids in snow gear leaping and whooping about him, and listened to the phone call with a sort of loving misgiving and trepidation. Lorraine sounded carefully balanced but teetering into delighted certainty that they were going to make it, and going by the amount of ecstatic yelling on the other end of the phone, most of which was high-pitched enough to make Sarah think it belonged to Lorraine’s niece, Lorraine’s family were already looking forward to their arrival. Sarah panicked for a small moment as she failed to remember the niece’s name, then composed herself with the thought that Lorraine would be more than happy to help her run through the entire family, undoubtedly with the aid of a family tree drawn in the notebook and pens probably lurking in her coat’s capacious pockets.

 

A sudden, intense flurry after a long period of nearly no snow at all hit the windscreen, and both Sarah and Lorraine jumped. Sarah cursed herself, and focussed her full attention on her driving as she pulled out of the town. The small roads like this one, which led to the dual carriageway and then to the motorway proper, were what was really concerning her; the councils probably wouldn’t have got round to them yet...

 

Lorraine ended her call with her sister, and looked anxiously at Sarah. Sarah knew that she must present a picture of concern, with her tongue between her teeth and staring out into the road, hair falling into her face from the loose bun she’d remembered to put it in just after she got into the car; she couldn’t afford a stupid distraction like her hair.

 

“It’s fine,” she said pre-emptively. “It’s just these little roads I’m worrying about.”

 

Lorraine chewed her lip and looked guilty. “I... You know you didn’t have to do this, right? We could have stayed at home.”

 

Sarah pulled onto the dual carriageway, the traffic on which was moving as fast as it could under the circumstances, and let out a small breath of relief. “You wouldn’t have been happy.”  
  
            “I would have got over it.”

 

“You shouldn’t _have_ to get over it.” Sarah squinted down the road at an overhead sign, blinking amber under the grey sky. SNOWFALL, EXPECT DELAYS. She pointed this out to Lorraine. “Will you look at that? I mean, no _shit_ , Sherlock.”          

 

Lorraine laughed, as Sarah had meant her to, and fished a box of Lindt chocolates out of the bags at her feet – a singularly uninspired gift from Cutter in the office Secret Santa. “Chocolate?”

 

“Mm. Yes please. Are there those, you know, the orangey ones –” Sarah snapped her fingers, looking for the word.

 

“Praline?” Lorraine riffled through the box of chocolates. “Possibly.” She pulled one out, unwrapped it, and popped it into Sarah’s mouth.

 

“’efinitely praline,” Sarah said with satisfaction and through a mouthful of chocolate. She swallowed. “Thanks, love. Can you put the radio on? I want to get the traffic news.”

 

Lorraine leaned forward and switched on the radio, messing around with the controls until it got to the local station, which gave them the tail end of the Christmas Number One in the charts – an allegedly uplifting ballad from the latest batch of X Factor singers - before segueing cheerfully into the news. To no-one’s surprise, the cheery presenter announced that the snow sweeping across Britain had brought joy to the hearts of a hundred small children, and followed this up with a cursory note about the station’s winter charity, which funded Christmas celebrations at several hospices in the area. She then gave a brief run-down of the arrest of several people for the murder of Patrick Quinn thirteen years ago in light of new information received, the latest spat at the EU, and a break-in at a well-known and highly exclusive jeweller’s the night before, by which time Sarah would happily have signed up to watch paint dry if it made the woman shut up and move onto the traffic. Unfortunately, Sarah’s telepathic messages were clearly not getting through, because they then had to suffer through five minutes of weather news, followed by an injunction to avoid inessential travel.

 

“This is essential travel,” Sarah said pointedly, without bothering to take her eyes off the road. She glanced across for a second and saw Lorraine blush and shift awkwardly in her seat.

 

“I wish I could at least take a turn driving,” Lorraine began, and was providentially interrupted by the radio, announcing the travel news.

 

 Sarah raised a hand. “Ssh.”                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

            Lorraine fell silent, and together they listened to a cheery and upbeat man describing the white Christmas in store for the UK, and the horrendous ways in which it was affecting the various motorways. Apparently there had been a major accident in Northumberland, and people in northern England, Wales and Scotland were being asked to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, but in southern England the response to the snow had been speedy and successful after last year’s disastrous snows, and the motorways – including the one Sarah and Lorraine were headed for – were largely clear and in good working order. This was followed by a local perspective, including a brief mention of last year’s snowfall and snippets of old radio interviews from a special programme they’d done on the subject, from the local council’s spokesman sounding very defensive, to a happy group of children squealing delightedly about how much fun they’d had, to a final, disconcerting thirty seconds of James Lester confirming in his snottiest tones that some staff had briefly been stranded on-campus at CMU, but had successfully returned home the following day and weren’t suffering any ill-effects.

 

            _Least of all from spending time in student lodgings_ , Sarah mentally added, recalling the rooms she, Lorraine, Lester, Tom Ryan, Stephen and Cutter the Nutter had spent the night in. Sarah was a tall woman, and had found the short bed deeply uncomfortable, especially when trying to share it with Lorraine, who wasn’t exactly a pixie either. The sheets had been nasty, too; Sarah had no scruples in referring to them as tools of ancient biological warfare, and had been strongly tempted to leave a note recommending a good local laundrette. All in all, it had been a bit like being transported back to the most confusing and disconcerting bits of her undergrad days – coming out, navigating student accommodation, learning to manage her laundry before it developed sentience and managed her – combined with a romance novel cliché. This reflection never failed to give her filthy, filthy thoughts about what might have happened if she and Lorraine had met eight years and a couple of degrees previously, which was why it was a really terrible idea to be entertaining it _at the wheel of a car during a minor snowstorm_.

 

            Luckily, Lorraine switched the radio off and distracted her.

 

            “But baby, they were playing our song,” Sarah drawled.

 

            Lorraine snorted. “I can hear Lester suppressing a hissy fit any day I like. It’s not remotely melodious. Do you think that traffic report means we’ll get through? I mean... it said congested, but...”

 

            “I wouldn’t have suggested we go if I didn’t think we had a chance,” Sarah said, slowing to accommodate the car in front of her. “Now I know we have a chance. The difference is small, but key.”

 

            “Yes,” Lorraine said dryly. “It’s the difference between digging ourselves out of the M25 with a JCB and getting to Jac’s a couple of hours late and being made a tremendous fuss of for our heroism.”

 

            Sarah felt a small twinge. She was sure Lorraine would be fussed over, but – they didn’t even _know_ her. She’d met most of them briefly, some of them more than once, but never all at once or for a sustained period of time, even though she and Lorraine had been together two and a half years (if you counted the three months it had taken for Sarah just to make it obvious to Lorraine that she wanted more than just friendship, which was stretching the point as far as Sarah was concerned). She chewed on her lip, concentrated on not rear-ending a car with rioting children in the back seat, and clung to Stephen’s slightly harried assurance that it would all be fine if she just told Lorraine. Stephen could be a bit dim about some things, but he’d been with Nick for donkeys’ years now, and if he could navigate a relationship with Cutter the Nutter he couldn’t be _too_ thick when it came to emotions.

 

            Several weeks later than she should really have done so, Sarah decided to bite the bullet and say what she really felt. “Lorraine-”

 

            “Sarah,” Lorraine began at the same time, since the unfortunate thing about ‘two minds with but a single thought’ was that there was a single thought in two minds waiting to be expressed, which was neither efficient nor comprehensible, and led to the kind of mix-up they were now experiencing.

 

            “You go-”

 

            “No, you, you started talking first-”

 

            “No, go on-”

 

            “Fine,” Lorraine capitulated. “I just wanted to say – oh, I don’t know. I suppose that I’m glad you’re here with me, I’m glad you’re happy with this, sometimes I’ve thought that maybe... I know your family’s very different to mine and you do things differently, but I hoped you’d like my family, I know they think you’re brilliant, and...” Lorraine closed her mouth on an uncharacteristic torrent of words, then glanced up at Sarah, full lower lip caught between her teeth, eyes full of appeal. “You know what I mean.”  


            Sarah pressed her lips together, peering at an upcoming sign and wondering if it was time to turn onto the motorway yet; the snowfall, in keeping with the on-off pattern that was driving her crazy, had cleared at least temporarily and with luck and good visibility they might actually get somewhere. “Yes... sort of.”

 

            “That’s not very reassuring,” Lorraine said, and Sarah could hear nervousness in her voice.

 

Sarah took her hand off the steering wheel, rested it on Lorraine’s thigh, and squeezed gently. “We’re fine. And I like your family. I’ve just, you know, I’ve never met them all together and I don’t really know how to act, if they’ll like me or not... They’ve only had to deal with me for a couple of hours at a time.”

 

“They like you,” Lorraine said firmly, taking hold of Sarah’s hand and stroking the centre of her palm with a thumb. “It’s true they’ve only had to handle you for brief periods of time, but you know, I’m always telling them about you because – well, you’re a part of my life, Sarah. And they like what they hear. They’re forever telling me to bring you over to lunch or something so they can spend time with _us_. I only held back because... I know you mostly aren’t close to your family, not the way I am. I didn’t want to overwhelm you, and my family are a bit overwhelming, let’s be honest. My brothers, for a start – Eric almost set fire to our carpet!”

 

“ _Almost_ ,” Sarah said placatingly, and removed her hand from Lorraine’s grip in order to hold the wheel steady for a bit before tangling her fingers with Lorraine’s again. “Look, I know what you mean about my family, but it’s... I don’t get on with my family the way you do. I mean, I used to with Auntie Viola, and we had some great times together – she cooked a mean roast before she had her first stroke, I am not worthy even to speak of it - but she’s dead and probably swindling St. Peter at poker as we speak. My family are... they’re...”

 

 _Distant_ , Sarah considered saying. _Out of touch_. Both were true, after all. Sarah had had no brothers or sisters; her father’s family had been – unsubtle – about disliking his marriage to an Iranian businesswoman, and her mother’s family had mostly stayed in Iran. Sarah’s memories of her cousins on her mother’s side were vague and faded but cheerful, and the only relative she’d ever known on her father’s side was his favourite aunt – the aforementioned Auntie Viola. Sarah had been sent to boarding school when she was eleven, and had embraced bisexuality and the Mallory Towers mythos with equal enthusiasm; when she returned from the first term of her third year, bouncing with excitement and her first kiss, she had discovered a house half-empty, a mother gone to New York, and a brooding father who reacted badly to the news that his little girl was kissing Joy Armitage behind the art block after lights-out.

 

Auntie Viola had told him he was a hypocrite to distance himself from his daughter, and had told her mother that she was a fool to let her child go, but the fact remained that happy family gatherings were few and far between, and the last time Sarah had seen her parents it had been her graduation ceremony. Not even for her Master’s – for her _BA_.

 

All this was nothing like the story Lorraine had to tell: Lorraine with her large, happy family who accepted and loved without question, who had actively encouraged Lorraine to come out when she felt comfortable and had taken care of her when she had, who celebrated her achievements and refused to let Lorraine play them down. It stood to reason that nothing was quite the same.

 

“... not as nice,” Sarah finished lamely, and when Lorraine (lovely, compassionate, well-meaning Lorraine) opened her mouth to say something nice, Sarah added sharply: “They aren’t, all right? They just aren’t. I’m talking Becker-family levels of not-nice – you were there when Nick accidentally got Becks drunk, do you remember?... It’s a bit like that. They can’t really... handle me. I’ve told you all this before.”

 

Lorraine nodded, because Sarah had, in fact, told her all this before, halfway down a bottle of wine while explaining to Lorraine that it wasn’t that she didn’t want Lorraine to know her family, it wasn’t that she was ashamed of her, it was just that she didn’t want to expose Lorraine to the twenty-four carat fuck-up that was the Page family. Which was why the only member of Sarah’s family Lorraine had ever met – would ever meet, if Sarah had her way – was the late, lamented Auntie Viola.  


“So I don’t know very much about families.” Sarah cleared her throat. “I haven’t had much – um, practice.”

 

Lorraine just nodded again, because she also knew all about Sarah trying to put her first serious boyfriend’s family at ease, joking and laughing into an increasingly austere silence and being dumped on the strength of it, about a constant stream of parents under the mistaken impression that half-Iranian meant Muslim and over-sensitive or belligerent because of it, and finding out the hard way that a series of university girlfriends had in actual fact been closeted at home.

 

Sarah cleared her throat, nerves jangling. “So I’m a bit... nervous? I can’t even remember all their names. What if I get something _wrong_ -”

 

“We all get things wrong,” Lorraine said soothingly, before Sarah’s anxiety could express itself through hand-flailing, which would have been detrimental to her driving. “You remember how my brother almost set fire to our carpet when he came to stay? Well – how could anyone forget, really, but...”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Well, he _actually_ set fire to Jacinth’s carpet two years ago. There’s a scorch-mark, it’s covered by a rug. And somehow he has yet to be thrown out of the family.”

 

“Yes, but he’s family.”

 

“And you’re _my_ family.” Lorraine leant over and kissed her cheek. “Wrong and incestuous as that sounds on hearing it aloud, you’re _mine_ , and they like you already because they know you make me happy. They won’t freeze you out. Not even if you set fire to the kitchen.”

 

Sarah relaxed to the point of almost missing the turning onto the motorway. “You honestly think they’ll like me?”

 

“Honestly.” Lorraine squinted into the distance. “You know, I’m a little reluctant to make out with you when you’re driving through snow, but if I remember rightly there’s a big motorway services just up here, and I think we might be about to run out of petrol shortly.” 

 

Sarah, startled, glanced at the indicator on the dashboard. It was showing almost full, and she felt a grin blossom on her face. “Definitely. Running on fumes for the past fifteen minutes. I just didn’t want to say.”

 

Lorraine gave her a besotted look that said _oh, you_ more clearly than any words, and Sarah experienced a moment of brief regret that she couldn’t just pull over and indulge in some teenaged debauchery behind steamed-up car windows.

 

Lorraine’s grin turned wicked, and she leant over and murmured in Sarah’s ear, a hand rested caressingly over Sarah’s shoulder, a thumb gently brushing the tender skin of her neck. “Later.”

 

Sarah shivered, and changed lane to get into the motorway services. “You drive me _mad_ ,” she said with feeling, and meant something else entirely, something better telegraphed by the smile flickering on her lips and the glow on her face, and something Lorraine knew without being told.

 

Sarah let the smile take over as she pulled into the forecourt to fill up with petrol they didn’t really need.

 

It turned out Stephen gave pretty good advice, after all.


End file.
